Compare & Compre Chaves de CD The Amazing American Circus

The Amazing American Circus takes you on a romantic romp through the American frontier. It offers an innovative take on card duelling games that feels like a step in the right direction towards the experience it really wants to be.

Making it to the big top is a mechanically sound journey with a lot of great characters to choose and varied enemies making each combat fun. Unfortunately, the journey to each combat is fraught with graphical gaffes, sound repetition, and story doled out in odd intervals. Good old Uncle Jack can’t save this from falling out of the spotlight making The Amazing American Circus worth a look only for those that enjoy circus acts or deeper than expected card battlers. Everyone else can pull away from this mediocre performance.

I find The Amazing American Circus to be a very unbalanced experience. Simple on the surface, the card playing becomes more of a struggle as audiences turn against you. The lovely sepia look can only do so much as you slog your way through the continent and I don't think the upgrades turn the tide much in your favour. I find it boring at times and the card playing can feel so harsh as you get into longer performances.

The Great American Circus’ strengths lie first and foremost in its family friendly premise and presentation. That smart lure roped me in to a well fleshed out card match game with a leveling system that doesn’t quite grab me. If that and an uphill climb for making a comeback in a performance doesn’t deter you, then there’s a lot of fun to be had in this upcoming attraction.

The Amazing American Circus is a recommendation with enormous caveats. We loved it to the point that we can, without cynicism, say that it has peaks that few games will better this year. But it’s so unfriendly, gatekeeping the fun behind ineffective tutorials, keywords and initially complex systems.

There’s still a certain compulsion to whacking out cards in an optimal order, figuring out the most impressive combos during performances and the most efficient routes through the meta-game camp upgrades. There are endearingly playful touches, too, like the way my strongman quivers when he’s nervous, or how Henry Ford rocked up to that show in a motorised carriage with a plush leather seat. Those joys fade fast, though, and you’re left with a slog to a finale you’ll just have to hope is no longer broken. I hate to say it, but there are better shows in town.

I wanted to like The Amazing American Circus. The idea of a card battler game that isn’t necessarily about combat sounded appealing, and its 1800s travelling circus theme makes a rather interesting backdrop. But its gameplay just isn’t fun, and its systems are convoluted and often make little sense. Chances are you’ll get so fed up of long-winded, unsuccessful performances that you’ll give up long before you make any sort of meaningful progress. The bottom line? There are much, much better games in the genre, so play something else instead.

A historical video game prioritises and engages with contemporary agency and understanding of the past over the historical document. The Amazing American Circus is not even a historical document, but a media text taking the form of a video game.

The Amazing American Circus is a simplistic and yet exciting strategy card game that thrives off incredibly illustrated cards and the whimsical nature of the good ol’ circus. It’s well-narrated story feels less like a game and more like a classic journey across the wild west as you perform to the masses, earning your fame and fortune, and the occasional rotten tomato to the face.